The Institute for Energy Research (IER), is a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization that conducts research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets.[1] Praised by Rush Limbaugh as the "energy equivalent" of the Heritage Foundation,[2] IER maintains that the free-market provides the most inexpensive solutions to global energy and environmental challenges.[3]

IER was founded in 1989 by Robert L. Bradley Jr. in Houston, Texas. IER began by distributing quarterly reports to a small but growing list of donors in the early 1990s and eventually expanded its publishing capabilities to include highly publicized studies. It was not until 2001 when Bradley, who previously worked as Enron’s public policy analysis director, secured funding to make IER a full-time organization. In 2007 IER was moved to Washington, D.C. where it transformed itself into a formidable energy think tank offering research and analysis on global energy markets.[2]

In December 2011, IER released its North American Energy Inventory,[8] a compilation of total energy in North America. Using the North American Energy Inventory, IER asserted that the US could be energy independent if the US federal government were to allow for greater domestic energy exploration and production.

The Institute's CEO and founder, Robert L. Bradley, Jr., is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, a research fellow at the Center for Energy Economics at the University of Texas at Austin, and an adjunct scholar at both the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.[9][10] He has written seven books, including Capitalism at Work and Edison to Enron,[11] and he maintains the website Political Capitalism.[12]

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The Institute for Energy Research has a political arm, the American Energy Alliance, which is responsible for multi-million dollar television advertising campaigns that have attacked energy policy, ideas and positions of the Obama Administration that are contrary to the those held by IER. The American Energy Alliance is run by Thomas (Tom) Pyle, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. According the its website, the Alliance engages in "grassroots public policy advocacy and debate" regarding energy and environmental policies.[16]

Both IER and the American Energy Alliance are partly funded by the Koch Brothers and their donor network, according to Politico's research, sources - and to reports by Koch-controlled charitable foundations themselves. The American Energy Alliance, as a matter of policy, does not disclose the names of its donors.[17]

American Energy Alliance provide an online petition to U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry regarding the US federal government administration's approval of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline extension. American Energy Alliance compare the extended time for the application approval to the time it took for the Allies "to win World War II."[18]

Benjamin Cole, a spokesman for American Energy Alliance told Politico in October 2012 that, "Our [American Energy Alliance] goal is to make the Wind Production Tax Credit so toxic that it makes it impossible for John Boehner to sit at a table with Harry Reid and say, ‘Yeah, I can bend on this one.’" [19]